1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a method for reusing an object extracted or generated from a document input to an image processing apparatus, such as a multifunction peripheral (MFP) or a scanner.
2. Description of the Related Art
Hitherto, reusing a document has been performed in a document managing system, for example, a user searches for a registered document and views or copies the document.
Also, there exists a technique for updating a created document (e.g., Patent Document 1: Japanese Patent Laid-Open No. 11-212962). According to the method suggested in Patent Document 1, a user creates a document by obtaining predetermined image data of JPEG or the like from a database (DB) and inserting the image data into the document. Then, when the image data used is manually updated in the DB, the user selects update or non-update of the image data in the document.
Easily-reusable data is not data of a document itself, but is often multi-purpose data of a partial area included in the document. For example, when a document includes sentences describing a printer and a photo of the printer, it is more convenient for the user that the photo of the printer is separated and extracted from the document and is registered as partial-area data in the DB, compared to the case where only data of the document is registered.
In creation of a document, the technique according to the above-mentioned Patent Document 1 is capable of pasting an existing image on the document and updating the image in the document when the image is updated.
In some cases, however, image data of a figure or the like desired by a document creator does not exist in a DB at the time of creating a document. Here, assume that partial-area data extracted from a document and attribute information specified are regarded as an object, which is managed in a DB under the assumption of being reused for creating a document.
The document creator draws an image by himself/herself or manually searches the DB until an object has been registered therein. Also, according to Patent Document 1, update of an object is manually performed by a user, so that a best object is not found automatically during creation of a document.
The DB to manage objects may have a mechanism of automatically registering an object obtained through scanning in an MFP or the like. In that case, however, the amount of data of objects managed in the DB increases and data management is complicated, and thus a searching efficiency decreases disadvantageously.